Websites of Indian government and Tibetan activists hacked

NEW DELHI: Websites of Indian government and Tibetan activists in the country are under attack in a cyber attack campaign engineered by a Chinese hacker, working with one of the world's largest e-tailers Tencent, a report released by IT security firm Trend Micro said on Friday.

The Luckycat cyber campaign, has been linked to 90 attacks in recent past against targets in India and Japan, as well as against Tibetan activists, said the report released by the Japanese network security firm. 'Luckycat' has been able to compromise about 233 computers many of which are in India.

"We were able to track elements of this campaign to hackers based in China," said Baburaj Varma, Head - Technical Services (India & SAARC) Trend Micro.

"The victims, include Indian military research organisations and shipping companies, besides aerospace, energy and engineering companies in Japan," said Varma

The owner of the attack alias, according to online records, is Gu Kaiyuan, a former graduate student at Sichuan University, in Chengdu, China. The university receives government financing for its research in computer network defence. The hacker is now an employee at Tencent, China's leading internet company, according to Trend Micro.

According to the report, the hacker is believed to have recruited students to work on the university's research involving computer attacks.